[Greenbuilding] $25 Radon Test + ETR Health Scan RE: Water Softener Filters

Wed Feb 4 16:39:17 CST 2015

Dear Dan: Regarding this request "But back to the
health issue. I’m looking for solid research and not anecdotal tales of horror",
if your water is as bad as you claim, it' probably worse because local health
departments will not test for heavy metals & radionuclides in private
wells. 

     You should ask your doctor to order a
provoked urine test because ordinary blood test will not show dangerous levels
of Lead, Manganese, Beryllium, Cadmium, Copper, Arsenic, Thallium, Mercury,
Thorium, Uranium, Cesium, etc.

     You should also purchase a Health Scan
like that described in the WSC Press Release @ http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/water-systems-council-partners-with-etr-laboratories-to-offer-25-discount-on-health-scan-water-well-testing-kit-272550411.html. 

      Be sure to opt for the $25 dollar test
for Radon gas, because you may be surprised to learn most high-priced RO
systems like WateRx, RainSoft, Mermaid, etc. will pass Radon gas after removing
its decay metallic products like those shown @ www.nist.gov/pml/general/curie/images/radondecay_1.gif,
for longest lived Radon gas (Rn-222).

False Claims by Filter Manufacturers

     A friend of mine has a $3,500
whole-house WateRx Model WH5. It failed to remove 135 pCi/L of Radon, according
to ETR test results on a sample taken 10/29/14.  Another friend has two
homes, one in Peconic, NY equipped with a Mermaid filtration system; another in
Naples, FL equipped with a RainSoft system. Each cost over $7,000, yet passed  395
& 495 pCi/L of Rn-222, according to ETR test results on samples taken on
10/2/14 & 11/20/14, respectively.  

      Few people know Rn-222 dissolved in
water continues to produce Polonium-218 after leaving any filtration system --
unless its first removed by an aeration system capable of dropping it to 5
pCi/L.The
     graph @ http://www.gfxtechnology.com/F3.gif shows
     Vermont set an action level of 5 pCi/L in order to prevent total Alpha
     activity from exceeding 15 pCi/L in water contaminated by only Rn-222.The
     graph @ http://www.gfxtechnology.com/F4.gif shows
     what will happen if Congress allows the EPA to set an alternative MCL of
     4,000 pCi/L. (These graphs are linked to http://gfxtechnology.com/Po.html.

Recent Examples

      After years of battling my local water
company, on November 12, 2014 I paid $25 to have my public water supply tested
for Radon by ETR. As feared, the sample contained 387 pCi/L --- 77 times
Vermont's action level of 5 pCi/L. This means our water entering our house
every day also has 387 pCi/L of Po-218, Pb-214, Bi-214 & Po-214 + about
0.19 pCi/L of Pb-210, Bi-210 & Po-210. Pb-210 has the highest cancer risk
factor of all Gamma emitters; about half that of its Granddaughter,
Po-210.  

      Therefore, every 100 gallons of water
sold to us contains about 0.9 picograms of Rn-222. Nearby homes with large
families using over 300 gallons per day are receiving over 1 nanograms of
Po-210. 

      To put this
into perspective "In 1968, the
American Tobacco Company began a secret research effort to find out. Using
precision analytic techniques, the researchers found that smokers inhale an
average of about .04 picocuries of polonium 210 per cigarette."
["Puffing on Polonium", by Robert N. Proctor, NY Times 12/1/06 @ www.nytimes.com/2006/12/01/opinion/01proctor.html?_r=0]

If Proctor is right, 100,000 gallons of water has the
same amount of Po-210 as 25,000 cigarettes, yet the U.S. EPA excluded Radon
from its Radionuclides Rule of 1976. Why?

Best regards,

Dr. Carmine F. Vasile 

From: solardan26 at gmail.com

Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2015 18:42:49 -0800

To: greenbuilding at lists.bioenergylists.org

Subject: Re: [Greenbuilding] Water Softener Filters

John and Rob, 

Let me clarify more about the well water composition and how
the system I use works. 

First off, it is well water and has a lot of sediment, very
high iron and manganese content, and has been a problem with the sediment and
staining. The sediment collects inside toilet bowls and has to be cleaned out
about once a year. The iron is so thick that it stains everything and has even
clogged some of the smaller point-of-use filters we’ve used over the years. As
is, the water is drinkable but doesn’t taste good so we all use a variety of
filters for drinking water. 

The water has wreaked havoc on the plumbing, the washing
machine, and the solar thermal panels. Overall not the best water in the
world. 

The Water Right Sanitizer Plus is a “water softener” that
can use either potassium chloride or sodium chloride. The filter medium itself
is configured based on the water analysis you send the company. 

I don’t know how the older systems that Rob refers to work,
but the calculations he offers seems like a “one size fits all” calc that does
not apply to the filter we now use. 

The amount of potassium chloride the filter uses is based on
the hardness of the water. The harder the water, the more potassium chloride
needed to clean the filter. Since the well water “hardness” rating was only 63
mg/l it’s considered “medium” by our local lab, so it’s neither “hard” or
“soft.” And that means that the amount of potassium chloride used is less than
water that is rated as “hard” or “very hard.” Water Right explained the amount
of K used this way.

The intake of potassium from the consumption of
drinking-water treated with a water softener using

potassium chloride will vary depending on the level of hardness in the source
water.

 Assuming that a 100% potassium chloride-regenerated water softener
releases 14 mg

of potassium ions per liter in water with a hardness of 17 mg of calcium
carbonate per

liter, the amount of potassium released in 1 liter of drinking-water can be
calculated

for different hardness levels.

(Health Canada, 2008).

63 / 17 3.17  X 14 + K per /L   51.9 is your added
K to the drinking water

The amount of K added to the drinking water is 51.9 mg/L  not much.

As my original post for this thread was about the health
issues associated with using potassium chloride, this addresses the issue. But
it also means that compared to harder water, the filter doesn’t have to work as
hard and won’t use as much potassium chloride. Thus, the bi-weekly backwash
coming out of our filter won’t have as much K in it as other filters performing
more work.

Although K is a salt, it’s not as “harmful” to the
environment as sodium and won’t kill plants. In our case we’re lucky in that we
have plumbed the backwash directly into a branch-drain greywater system that
feeds a mulch-basin filled with hard and soft wood chips and is thriving with
fungi and mycelium. Mushrooms are known to form waxy substances over salt
crystals and we’ll be measuring this in future months to see what’s going on in
that environment. 

This and the greywater from the laundry and outdoor kitchen
will dilute the backwash. If the fruit trees die from the backwash then we’ll
certainly have learned something, but before that happens I think regular
monitoring and testing will be in order. 

A system that backwashes and cleans the filter medium is the
way to go unless you want to use more conventional filters and replace them on
a very regular basis. This is time consuming, expensive, and if you forget to
do it would result in the kinds of strains on the pump and overall system that
Rob was referring to. They might make sense for filtering municipal water where
much of the work has already been done at the factory, but for well water like
what we have it’s not a sensible way to go. 

So far so good! The water is clean, tastes better, we don’t
need to use point-of-use filters, we use less soap, everyone enjoys showering
and bathing more, and because we have a greywater system there is no
waste. 

But back to the health issue. I’m looking for solid research
and not anecdotal tales of horror. The Canadian study referenced
above is thus far the only one mentioned and it’s limited to people with
specific medical conditions that, again, would restrict their diet. No more
bananas for these folks. That doesn’t make a water softener bad for
consumption. 

The more I research water the more amusing it gets. RO
systems are considered the best of the best by some medical experts, but others
claim that because the water is “stripped” of all minerals that the water
“flushes all the minerals out of your body” and you need to take mineral
supplements. I’d like to see some research on that claim! The same is said of
drinking too much rainwater.

At this juncture in my research, I don’t think there’s a
single type of water delivered from any source, natural or otherwise, that
someone won’t criticize as having negative health effects. If anyone can find
that type and source of water please share.

Dan Antonioli

On Feb 1, 2015, at 12:34 PM, John Salmen <terrain at shaw.ca>
wrote:

Would agree and did the same thing, i.e. nothing (25 or so
years ago). Water softeners do require additional water (5-10%?) as well as the
sodium (which is now good for you again - though not for the septic as it can
reduce bacteria as well as reduce soil permeability). Basic thing is the
minerals in hard water are good for you and its just dumb to mess with water
too much. The one downside is inevitable clogging of supplies and piping which
I am now trying to figure out how best to deal with.

-----Original Message-----

From: Greenbuilding [mailto:greenbuilding-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org]
On Behalf Of RT

Sent: February-01-15 9:50 AM

To: Green Building

Subject: Re: [Greenbuilding] Water Softener Filters

On Thu, 29 Jan 2015 18:38:36 -0500, Antonioli Dan <solardan26 at gmail.com>

wrote:

Has anyone ever heard of water softeners using potassium
chloride or 

sodium chloride having negative health effects?

I have an application where I installed one on a well and everyone but 

one person thinks it’s great.

I'm afraid I don't recall whether it was mentioned if the house is connected to
municipal infrastructure or is on a well/private septic system so I don't know
if my comments will have any relevance to the query.

My home is in a rural area and all of the wells are drilled in rock which is at
or very near the surface, depths of the wells ranging from about 6 metres to
360 metres or more (~20 to 1200+ ft).

If one looks at the blast rock or rock cuts where roads have been built here,
iron oxide staining is usually evident.

That is to say, the water in this area is obviously very hard and has a high
iron content to boot.

I made a decision to NOT install a water softener nor an iron filter when I
built (about 30 years ago) simply because:

            (i) I
didn't want my household to be subjected to drinking water with

            elevated
salt content, potentially exposing them to heart & kidney health

          issues and

            (ii) I
didn't think that it made sense to be polluting perfectly potable

                        well water
with salt and then dumping that brine into the groundwater system,

           contributing
to compromised water quality and

            (iii) I
didn't think that it made sense to unnecessarily consume extra

                        energy and
water to remove minerals that are essential/beneficial to health

                        -- the
very same minerals that many people try to put back into their bodies by eating
high iron/calcium foods or taking supplement tablets .

Shortly after I built, there was a housing "boom" in this area-- a
result of the hi-tech sector in its prime, Kanata being "Silicon Valley
North" back then, and there was a proliferation of "rural
estate" subdivisions built from cash-ins of lucrative stock options or
cash-outs of small nascent companies being sold to bigger fish etc.

Most of the "new" households were people who moved out here from the
city, and it seems they had the same expectations for their well water that
they experienced in the city so water softeners and iron filters were de
rigueur.

So there was a large number of homes in the same area all built within a few
years of each other.

Starting at about the 8 year mark, I started noticing that many households were
experiencing failures of their well equipment, usually starting with the
pressure tank and then followed by the well pump shortly thereafter. I found it
curious because I had lived in rural locales pretty much all of my adult life
and failures of well equipment that "new" was rare.

Then at about the 18- 20 year mark, many households were having to replace
their septic fields. Back when those septic fields were constructed it was
before the advent of peat filter systems so all the septic fields were of the
raised filter media type, necessary because of the shallow-to-non-existent soil
overburden in this area. Such systems were more expensive to build initially
and 20 years later, the replacement cost had almost doubled.

Even if the cost of replacing well equipment and repairing plumbing flood
damage every 8-10 years and replacing septic fields every 20 years isn't
problematic, not having running water for a day or more while well equipment is
replaced is a pretty big PITA. (I refuse to use bottled water. I think that
it's ridiculous

All of the households that experienced premature failures of well equipment and
septic fields were homes where water softeners were installed. In the rural
communities where I had lived previously, the households were family farms and
water softeners were pretty much unheard of, as were short-lived well equipment
and septic systems.

My *guess* is that the extra demands placed on well equipment and septic
systems (ie higher volumes of water pumped and dumped due to backwashing

requirements) played a significant role in their premature demise.

But specifically in relation to KCl vs NaCl salt, we know that potassium is
highly desirable as a fertiliser. It's the third number on all store-bought
fertiliser packaging.

So while dumping potassium into the groundwater system may not be as obviously
harmful to water quality as is dumping sodium, it does contribute to nutrient
pollution of water systems which ultimately has a deleterious effect on all
living things, not just we up-right bipeds.

--

=== * ===

Rob Tom            ADT1

Kanata, Ontario, Canada

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.bioenergylists.org/pipermail/greenbuilding_lists.bioenergylists.org/attachments/20150204/6b77bb12/attachment.html>